Sailing
by angel-death-dealer
Summary: Everyone was present and accounted for, apart from the one person he wanted to see more than anything. The team say goodbye to a fallen comrade, a friend, a leader, a father. In progress, series of speeches. Mentions of Tiva, McAbby, Jibbs, and more.


**Okay, a lot of people are going to hate me for this, and a lot of people might just get bored with me, because I get the feeling a lot of people have touched on this before. My thanks go to Emma, who granted me a get-out-of-jail free card to write this, because we have rules and this broke one of them. Basically, this first chapter is in prose, but a lot of it is going to be speeches. It's going to pull at the heartstrings, I hope. A lot of people have told me with my other stories that I've made them cry, so I've actually been really cruel and decided to test this theory with this story. So, be honest!**

**Sailing**

**Chapter One  
**

Standing before the sea of people before him, Anthony DiNozzo felt a rise of nerves within him. Public speaking had never been his favourite thing in the world, despite the many speeches he'd half-delivered on behalf of his mentor when he would fail to collect himself. Other than those speeches, which he'd readily prepare in advance, he'd hate being forced to deliver words before a mass of people, which was strange considering that he usually loved to be the centre of attention. If he could be on a dance floor instead with some funky music playing he'd be having the time of his life, he'd be more than happy to put on a show for the people staring up at him with expectant eyes, but here? On a podium? With a speech written in his hands that he'd edited so many times it was unrecognisable from it's first attempt? This seemed a little too out of his depth.

The first speech had been written on the back of a case report. Not the best thing in the world, considering it would no doubt be photocopied and filed away in storage, but it was the only thing he had near him at the time when the first words came into his head. A day later, he'd found that he didn't like those words anymore, and he'd let the case report be filed and started writing it instead on the edge of a newspaper. The newspaper had been thrown away carelessly, by himself of all people, and he'd been unable to remember what he'd written, so he'd started all over again, this time on a plain piece of paper that had large letters on top reading 'very important, do not throw away'. He'd thought that one was ridiculous, so he'd thrown that one away as well. Next he'd written one out, found himself pleased with it and shown it to Ziva, asking what she thought. She'd rather kindly not pointed out the spelling mistakes and told him that it was nice. Nice was a word she never used, so he'd started again, knowing that she'd just been too good-natured under the circumstances to tell him that the words which had come from his heart weren't good enough. The one after that he'd shown to McGee, who'd been on autopilot with a piece of writing in his hands and had pointed out every spelling and grammatical error. Tony had thanked him, and started him again regardless; this time using the computer which had automatically corrected any errors he made. He forgot to save the file, the computer crashed, and he'd been too proud to ask McGee to get it back for him.

The right words, or as right as he realised he could make them, had came to him the night before. He'd been sitting up in the kitchen, coffee before him because he knew that if started on the whiskey he'd never stop, and that was something he couldn't afford to come back from again, not when he had too much to lose, much more than the first time. No, he'd stuck with the coffee. Thankfully, it was the last cup of coffee that had given him the burst of energy to write his words on a piece of paper, and it was at the exact moment of sunrise when a pair of arms had encircled him from behind that he finished the last word, his wrist almost numb from writing for so long. Her arms had comforted him in the early morning sunshine, but he hadn't let her read what he had written.

It seemed so typically tragic that the weather that day had been the most beautiful it had been in months. Even now, the sunset seemed to mock them. The die-cast colours of red, orange and pink were sprawled out across the sky with such little care, yet it still appeared nothing short of a masterpiece. Small clouds dotted in the distance made the scene even more amazing to look at, but nobody who cast their eyes to the skies took any notice of it. While others gave slight glances to the sky, everyone else kept their attention fully on him, which made him shift uncomfortably, shuffling the only copy of his speech in his hands so dangerously that he feared for a moment it would tear, and that he would then be left with nothing to say at all.

He cast a glance down at the people before him, the first row made up of a mass of people squeezed into the seats, some people sharing two seats between three people in an attempt to all be there in the first row to show respect on this day. First, his eyes found the inevitable, his partner, his wife. Who'd have ever thought that he'd end up with Ziva David? Not him, for sure. The days of tension that they'd fought to avoid seemed so far in the distance, particularly today. He watched as she tried to give him a reassuring smile, a surge of confidence that had failed him, but it came out as more of a grimace given the situation. Her arm tightened around the small person beside her, and his eyes moved down. Two children sat either side of Ziva, their children, both dark haired and dark eyed, as it seemed their family trait had become. Both children were sitting silently, almost oblivious to the seriousness of what was going on around them. They knew that something serious was going on because he had sat them down and talked to them about it a week ago, and again that mornings, and several times in the middle of the night when one of them had wandered into the kitchen for a drink of water and found him sitting at the table, but it hadn't stopped them whispering to each other over their mother's laps. He couldn't blame them really, they were only young, Tali at four years old and Daniel at six. Still, their mother didn't make any move to cease their whispering because their innocence seemed like a light in the darkness of the day, something that he'd bear in mind once he returned to his seat and brought Tali into his lap again.

From this, he glanced further along this front row. Beside his immediate family, he found that of Abby and McGee's. Abby, naturally, was inconsolable, hunched beneath one of McGee's arms as he tried to hold both her and their daughters. These two had given into the inevitable many years before Tony and Ziva had done, and were almost reaching their fifteenth wedding anniversary. They'd married a year after they had all been reunited following Jenny's death, an event that still marked them all no matter how far in the past it was. Abby had their youngest daughter, Emma, on her lap, clinging to the seven year old and trying to assure herself that she was comforting her daughter more than herself. McGee was holding onto nine year old Charlotte, who understood the day all too well and was sobbing silently into her father's shoulders. Eleven year old Charlie was on his father's side, trying to be a big brave boy and look after his sisters, like everyone had told him, but was still gripping onto his father's sleeve for comfort.

Along from them was Ducky and Mike Franks, both of whom seemed so very alone compared to the two families. They also both seemed very aged all of a sudden, something Tony hadn't really considered until recently. Ducky was still their medical examiner, but none of them had seen Mike Franks in years, and if he had not been retired in Mexico before, he certainly would be now. Even his granddaughter was almost grown, but he had expressed to Tony earlier that his granddaughter was away on a school trip and wouldn't be returning in time for her godfather's ceremony. She'd been upset, apparently, but hadn't really had the chance to get to know him other than the stories she had heard.

Beside Ducky was Jimmy Palmer, who was certainly no more the shy, clumsy medical student. No, he had his own family now, a wife, Zoe, who had given him two sons, Benjamin and Aaron. Ben was almost ten now, but Aaron was only five, and like Tony's own children, didn't really understand why he was being told to sit still for so long. Director Vance was in the row behind, insisting that the front row was for 'family only'. Even Fornell was further along the front row, seemingly alone, but Tony knew that in the crowds of people that existed beyond the front row there was the entire Naval Criminal Investigative Service, a large handful of marines of all ranks, even some long retired, and also operatives from the FBI, CIA, and even some overseas agencies. Ziva's father, for instance, had taken a seat further from the front row, but he knew despite her lack of reaction, that his wife was glad that her father had found it in his heart to attend.

Everyone was present and accounted for, apart from the one person he wanted to see more than anything; the person who could have given him the strength he needed with a simple tap to the back of his head and a "get to the point". It was wishful thinking, however, as it was clear that this person was never going to arrive. He wouldn't come in calmly through the back, not caring who he disturbed until he got to his seat. Tony had grown used to knowing when he would turn up for something and when he wouldn't. Something like this he definitely wouldn't have showed up to. He'd have told them not to bother and be at home in his basement instead. But regardless of that, Tony was stood before a sea of people, and he had a message to deliver.

Clearing his throat, he leaned a little closer to the microphone that had been placed on the podium he was speaking from. The fact that he needed a microphone on the podium only served to remind him about the size of the crowd. There was easily a thousand people crammed into the memorial area. Looking out among them proved to him how many people were affected by this loss. Rows upon rows of people had turned up to honour the loss, to mourn their own personal grief, but it was nothing compared to the grief that had taken hold of the family and friends of such an amazing man.

He cleared his throat for a second time, and began his speech.


End file.
